11-year-old shoved niece out of bullet's way
Seven-year-old Lakeyia Mumford has a scar on her chin, a reminder of the bullet that whizzed through her extended family's Dorchester home.
But Lakeyia said yesterday that the bullet might have killed her if her 11-year-old aunt, Tamara Mair, hadn't shoved her out of the way as the two practiced dancing.
"She tried to push me down so I wouldn't get hurt," said Lakeyia, still wearing her hospital bracelet, her chin gleaming with ointment. "She saved my life. . . . I could have got hit right here in my eye, or it could have went through."
Tamara said she shoved her niece from the hallway into the dining room when she realized there was danger. "You could tell it was a bullet," she said . "When it came through the wall it was smoky."
The bullet, having grazed Lakeyia, went through Tamara's side. "I felt really dizzy, and I fell to the floor," she recalled. "And, like, it was stinging, and it made me move around a lot."
Tamara, still wearing hospital scrubs, said yesterday that the wound to her side hurts a lot, though she couldn't quite describe how. "I've never been shot before," she said.
The two are close friends who like to practice dance steps together when they're not working on homework. They had just started a ballroom dancing routine Tamara saw on the television show "Dancing with the Stars," when at least five gunshots rang out at about 2:45 p.m. Sunday.
Police and relatives say the shots were aimed at someone else. Neighbors reported hearing screeching tires and seeing a burgundy-colored
Tamara said she is scared to sleep and to walk to the bus stop because she "can't trust nobody around me." She said she hopes that whoever pulled the trigger will be off the streets soon, so she can stop being afraid.
"I kept thinking about the same thing over and over and over, like, 'What's going to happen next?' " she said. "They did something really bad.
"I just want them to turn themselves in, instead of getting caught, because it's gonna be worse if they get caught."
The shooting was one of 323 in Boston this year through Sunday, a 14 1/2 percent increase over last year, according to Police Department statistics released yesterday.
Acting Police Commissioner Albert Goslin urged the public to come forward with information so police can put the shooter in jail.
"It's an outrageous act of cowardice," Goslin said in an interview. "Somebody knows something: who they are, where they are, and where they can be found. That information needs to come forward.
"We're not asking somebody to sit in open court and put themselves in harm's way," he said. ". . . They can do it anonymously and probably give us enough information that points us in the right direction, so our investigators can identify these individuals and remove them and the firearms they have from the street."
Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com. 
